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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23398273">Dear nostalgia</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwertysweetea/pseuds/qwertysweetea'>qwertysweetea</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hetalia: Axis Powers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Blood and Violence, Dark Spain (Hetalia), Fantasizing, Hetalia Countries Using Human Names, Historical Hetalia, Idiots in Love, Love Confessions, M/M, Mutual Pining, Nostalgia, Power Play, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, Unhealthy Relationships, Violence, countries aren't nice guys, some of them are just stupid enough to fall in love with their rival, they're ready to fight 24/7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 05:40:40</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,349</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23398273</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwertysweetea/pseuds/qwertysweetea</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The smell of summer heat and wine comes off Antonio's hair in waves, until nostalgia makes it smell like fire.</p><p>AKA: It was easier to talk about their feelings when they were beating the hell out of each other.</p><p>[Human names used because it's nicer that way, @ me]<br/>[Laptop declutter, Apr. 2020]</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>England/Spain (Hetalia)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>33</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Dear nostalgia</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Long story short, I'm having a declutter of all my old writing and fanfictions, and I am sitting on a few finished pieces that I'm quite proud of and a little sad that I wasn't going to get the chance to publish, until I realised that I can do whatever I damn well want with my writing.  So, despite falling away from the Hetalia fandom about 9 years ago, here you go.</p><p>Enjoy.</p><p>(Don't make me tell you that this shit is incredibly unhealthy and not at all romantic. Just don't.)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“It’s been a long time Arthur.” The power of the sun really did reside within him in the most comforting ways; a holiday after a strenuous time at work, an afternoon by the poolside and a stroll through fairy-lit back-streets to acoustic guitar music. Waves of summer heat and fruity wine came off his hair.</p><p>Even now it made Arthur slightly resentful. All he could feel radiating out from himself was damp listlessness, surrounding, suffocating him like a grim aura. He wondered if Antonio felt it on him as he felt it, not that he had any intention of asking.</p><p>“Hardly a lifetime, Fernandez.” He replied, focusing on stirring the sugar into his tea. He regrets the choice instantly. Tea has never been strong enough to deal with Antonio. “I remember decades at a time going by where I was happily ignorant of your existence.” It wasn’t said unkindly, the centuries had taken away the bite of it, and the honesty.</p><p>The deliberate avoidance was only surface deep. And both of them knew it. If he was truthful with himself, and he tried not to be around Antonio, he couldn’t remember the last time he had gone more than a year without being grateful to see the other. No good could come of it; it would only expose how much things had changed, or maybe how little. </p><p>Antonio watched the Briton through narrowed eyes. “What decades they were…” he mused “and what explosive meetings followed. Thank Heaven for paper treaties and a stricter social customs. If only we could be sure there were no time or space on Earth where we wouldn’t slip from them.”</p><p>“Stop flirting. You’ll forget that you are meant to hate me.” Arthur laughed back, short and abrupt.</p><p>“Nothing could make me forget that, my dear.”</p><p>Time had long since taken the sharpness and truth out of their quips. As it does with most everything in existence, time had blunted the bitterness and hatred, the practice so distant it no longer seemed real outside of nostalgic bursts. But somehow, laced into the words, Antonio sounded like he actually meant it again. Arthur’s eyebrow quirked at it, but he said nothing. He let the silence fall, heavy and charged. </p><p>For a moment, Arthur allowed himself to dwell on the days that he would bite back and imagined what would come now if he did.</p><p>
  <em>“What day is it, Spaniard?” He would place down his cup, spinning to face the other for the first time outside of their accidental eye contact outside the meeting room. “What year? What place? Sight, smell, sound, taste? What business have you being nostalgic in my presence? Why are you goading me?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Why are you speaking to me in Old Spanish?” Antonio would quip back.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“You’ve been speaking Old Spanish since you greeted me,” stepping forward once, twice, into his space as easy as modern politics allowed it to be.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Once upon a time, it took months of planning and resources beyond measure to see them in the same place, at the same time. A court of men and women who fancied themselves important-looking on. Their distance was ensured and their privacy avoid. When they stole moments they were as fleeting as they were intense. They were the only times they were close without war buzzing underneath their skin.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Barely a breath apart; his body screaming at him to create that distance again, only matched by the screaming to close it, and Antonio would smirk “Something in the air.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“So you decided to drag me into your little nostalgic crisis?” The switch to Old English would be seamless; he had never let it go. Sometimes eras are easy to forget, their language dissolves into the general haze but not this one… never that one. “Sometimes I feel it too, a small flame of hatred flickering away deep down inside, the one you’re too attached to truly extinguish; the bloodthirsty monsters the world likes to pretend died long ago…”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Now who’s flirting.” Antonio would try to make it steady in his throat, but Arthur's right. Always right. After all this time they could see through each other, knew each other. Old English made the other's chest flare with beautiful, white-hot hatred.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I ignore it. If I didn’t, no amount of modern-day custom would stop me from having you against the wall with a knife in your side.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Antonio had always been fast and sharp. People liked to see him as otherwise; they were hiding from the truth, many for good reason and others out of habit, but Arthur knew too well what game he was playing and he'd be reminded when his face would hit the table, nose splintering against the force. The fingers in his hair, firm and clear with their intent, enough so that Arthur knew not to fight against the movement, even as the rising tidal wave of rage in his chest set every nerve in his body ready to.</em>
</p><p>A smile danced onto the Spanish man’s lips, not quite hidden by his own coffee cup; he wasn’t the most perceptive, he didn’t need to be; when Antonio was around, Arthur felt like a book on display in a museum. There was a breathy chuckle, muffled by porcelain.</p><p>“I like it when you daydream about me.”</p><p>God, Arthur wanted to smash the cup into his face. His fingers tightened on his own before releasing, over and over, pulsing, as though he was trying to massage out its imperfections.</p><p>“You make me…” he paused, flitting through an array of words before settling on “...idealistic.”</p><p>“Romantic.” Antonio corrected, as though he could see it fighting itself to the forefront. Open book, on display, only for him. “We never were romantic though, were we? Passionate. Intimate. Fierce.” He listed, taking small, slow steps towards the other before retreating in the same manner. “Uncompromising. Jealous. Monsterous."</p><p>“Weak,” Arthur added, tone deepening with it “but I make you weak too. Even after all this time, all it would take is a…”</p><p>“…barely spoken promise in a dead language.” His eyes flicked up at him from under his fringe, stopping their dance across the freshly polished crockery on the table beside them, his pupils blooming. For a few seconds, the smell of fruity wine had soured with the smoldering heat. "You're..." He paused, gritting his teeth.</p><p>Antonio knows Arthur isn't the only one on display. 'You're... shameless like this. I like you like this' dissipated on his tongue.</p><p>
  <em>On his back in one strong movement, hardwood of the edge digging into the muscle, the world snapped from a disorientating blur of feeling back into passion-tinted clarity.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Antonio hovered above him, one hand in his hair and the other around his throat, his crushing force labouring his breathing enough to show his dominance. Eyes the same in their richness but changed… who he had been stared down at Arthur, not who he had forced himself to become.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And who Arthur had been stared back up at him; boyish stubbornness softened his features while the consuming wrath of war made them harsh. All those paper treaties and false niceties scattered. Antonio’s hair no longer smelled like summer heat and wine, it smelt of fire and copper. Intoxicating. A huff of laughter left Arthur’s throat, strained from the weight of the other pressed onto it. Blood trickling down his cheeks, congealing around the other's fingers.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“You never did know how to shut your mouth, did you, Kirkland? You’d have thought you’d have learnt but here you are, after everything, even when you stand all on your own, weak, reeking of internal conflict just like the days when your protestant bitch was locked up in the tower.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“So that’s it. A bit of vulnerability and a few words in an old language is enough to bring him to the surface?” He would bark out with a laugh and a mouthful of blood. He knew it was true. As well as the other knew him, he knew Antonio. “So little restraint. For all your ambition, you’ve always been weak-willed.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Antonio smiled, and through the sincerity, he still sounded mocking “Only for you.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“You better break me, Fernandez. You better break me down until I’m nothing but a mess of sobs and begs. Because if you don’t, the moment you loosen your grip, I’m going to tear your throat out with my teeth, paint myself with your blood, and fucking destroy you.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He’d be rewarded with a smack, so hard it rattled his brain, leaving stars dancing in front of his eyes. The burn of it would linger on his skin for hours; scaring and charming him in a potently nostalgic way; if he dared to close his eyes then, he thought he would possibly hear the echoing quiet of their distant palace rooms, wiping away the bustling conference rooms and corridors of the hotel beyond them.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Arthur had always been a delicious sight ruined, reddish-purple handprints littering his face and neck, bruises blooming and bloody smile. He tasted fire and gunpowder, blood and the sea on his tongue; they mingled together, consuming the air, invading his lungs. Elizabethan through-and-through, not even the buzzing fluorescent lights shining off his sweat-glistened skin could drag it away. He knew it, felt it; Antonio couldn’t bring himself to take his eyes off him.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Such a whore, laying there with your words. No real fight... your Queen would be so proud of you. Finally finding your place."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>His laugh was loud and manic, spraying crimson droplets over his face. “I’m going to fucking kill you, you Spanish fuck. I’m going to tear you apart.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“How long have you been trying to convince yourself you never wanted me?” Antonio continued “Saying no between moans, claiming you want me to stop as your body arches towards me. Pupils blooming, eyes glowing the harder my knife presses into your throat. Lips, breath, body… everything begging for me except your voice. How long have you been pretending your blood doesn’t taste the best when it’s on my lips?”</em>
</p><p>“Do you miss it? Those lovesick words spilling out unrestrained, full of honest devotion?” Now it was Arthur’s turn to narrow his eyes with intent. He wanted it to hurt in the same scolding, intense way the others words hurt him. “Do you miss the way you could say anything to me?”</p><p>
  <em>Antonio would stumble back, lose his balance, and land with a thud. There's no fun if there isn't much of a fight.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Who the fuck do you think you are? Hissing romantic words at me like you’ve earned the right…” Arthur threw himself up, and in two strides he was on the other, knees digging into the thin carpet on either side of the Spaniard’s chest, arms pinned to his sides by the press of his legs, knife against his throat, droplets of blood staining the other's shirt.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“God above, I declare it with everything in me: I hate you.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“You’ve never been capable of it, nor deserving of it. Everything you have is what I have given freely or allowed you to take. Everything is a privilege. Every day your existence persists is a privilege granted by me. Say it!”</em>
</p><p><em>“I'll say it in your language and my own, loudly and softly, in front of anyone who is there to hear it and nobody at all. I might even bring myself to be ashamed of it if I didn't have the memory of you hissing it back fresh in my mind." With teeth already bared, Antonio would smile. "Nobody makes me feel like you do; even after all this time, I feel the anger slowly simmering under my skin. Your flat words and sharp accent, the smell of sea air and burning wood coming off your hair. Everything about you makes me sick to my stomach in ways that I can’t even explain. </em> <em>I hate you. I hate you so much it burns, and that's all I want to do. What a horrible husband you are."</em></p><p>“I could say anything to you now, centuries worth of it all built up of moments like this, a mess of half-formed thoughts and sparks of raw memory but it wouldn’t have the same meaning, would it? Not without earning the right to say it, and not without you telling me I’m unworthy of it…”</p><p>“Not when you mean it.” Arthur quipped back, a smile on his lips.</p><p>Antonio laughed, loud and unrestrained, head thrown back and throat bared as he did so, “what a cruel husband you have been to me, and what a cruel one I have been to you. We both know the words but neither of us will say them; skirting on the edge, knowing we can’t fall back in, still not willing to let each other go." He placed his cup under the machine again, pressing the refill button. When he finally took his eyes off the other, it was to look at the clock.</p><p>Another era could have passed in that room, the air carried the damp chill of a place touched by winter. It was haunting and a little comforting to know it had only been four and a half minutes.</p><p>
  <em>"Do you mean that? Please, tell me you do." Arthur begged with a voice as soft as his features. "Don't let this go. Don't let me go. Ever."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Slowly the corners of his bloodied lips curve, parting the slightest. Kissed by the smile that would never reflect in his eyes. "Never, Kirkland. With everything in me. Always." </em>
</p><p>"All we have now are memories Arthur, and daydreams and conversations in a dead language only the two of us remember." Once the wining of the machine came to an abrupt halt, Antonio held the cup out to the other, a smile touching the corner of his lips. It was kind, not too dissimilar to his usual brand, except it was for Arthur only. The smell of coffee mingled with the remanence of smoke. "But how can I be sad when I know you'll always meet me there?"</p>
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